


The Art of Manumission

by Animunculi



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tevinter Imperium, Anders goes to Tevinter, Body Horror, Danarius being an Asshole, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Economics of Slavery, M/M, Past Rape/Non-con, Slavery, Tevinter, Tevinter Politics, basically one long flashback, it doesn't go well, like an episode of naruto, lots of flashbacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2018-11-02 16:03:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10947924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Animunculi/pseuds/Animunculi
Summary: Very rarely are we truly free.





	1. The Tevinter Healer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders went to Tevinter imagining a paradise. He knows better now and isn't sure who he is inside the machine of Tevinter politics.

Anders flinched as another slam rocked the foundation of the Hanged Man.

Judging by the ceaseless noise- the battle cries that rang over the tortured shrieks of a summoned shade and the chaos of a fight in too crowded a space and all the accompanying sounds- Anders assumed that either one of the many thugs who congregated at the tavern had sufficiently irritated Danarius or Fenris wasn’t coming as quietly as his master expected him to.

 _Either way_ , Anders thought with a tight laugh.  _Someone’s_   _getting their heart ripped out_.

It was a sick amusement but Anders had long ago reconciled his healer’s heart with watching massive internal damage meted out against the generally innocent. A common theme when it came to Tevinter and the madmen it turned out.

At least it offered him job security.

The healer leaned backward in his chair, cracking his spine over the back and putting an enormous effort into ignoring a jagged piece of the wood. The poor piece of furniture must have been the blunt instrument in several fights, like most of the other objects in the room.

The Hanged Man was arguably one of the more disgusting taverns Anders had spent time in, which was certainly an achievement because Anders had lived in a brothel.

There were scratches under the bedposts and along the walls, jagged cuts from misaimed swords, and a great many stains of unknown origin. Danarius had fidgeted throughout the evening, sprawled across the bed as he repeatedly asked his healer to sooth aching muscles and complained of the smell. Varania, who had sat hunched at the edge of the bed, hadn’t noticed much else outside her own head and never glanced twice at the idling drunkards.

Whether because she was too trapped in her own thoughts or was familiar with depravity wasn’t clear.

Anders felt at home here. It was Tevinter that scared him.

Regardless, because Anders’ feelings were of disregard, the other mages hadn’t been excellent company but anything was better than the overwhelming silence, interrupted briefly by the scratching of Fade Spirits, that Anders suffered in now.

Across the room, a wide eyed little Spirit huddled atop the table, her unblinking, glowing eyes shining so bright, Anders could see her through the Veil.

The Spirit of Compassion licked at his mind like a low burning flame, urging him to act on his stomach’s guilty squirming and hurry down the stairs and burst into the tavern to assist Fenris in his righteous battle. Unfortunately for her, Cynicism had taken up shop long ago and Anders merely smiled at her pleading.

When Anders spurned her, refusing to be a hero on account of wanting to live another day,  _refusing to do what was right_ , her entire being shuddered and she flicked out of Anders’ perception.

After half a second alone ( _the black creeping into the empty spaces_ ), Anders focused on Compassion and summoned her back, just in case someone did need healing.

Someone always needed healing, Anders amended. What really mattered was whether _Danarius_ decided they needed healing or blood magic to the face.

Despite the fact that Danarius didn’t cling to Anders’ contract, the magister was the ultimate decider in his fate. Although Anders never once uttered the word “master”, he had never called the Knight-Commander master either. Didn’t make him any freer.

If he ran from Danarius’ service, there would be no bounty issued by the Imperium and no guard to hunt him down. Instead, there would be debt collectors, bounties issued by the bank, but they posed no threat. How exactly did one track a man without a name, legally barred from owning any assets or forming any attachment?

Anders could just imagine their trials; “ _Excuse me, we’re looking for an Ander, no, sorry, that would be Anders. He owes Magister Danarius a lot of money. No, he isn’t a citizen nor does he own any property. Um, he’s blond?”_

No, Anders feared nothing but the Templars.

He could be free of Danarius, easily, but he would never be free of the Chantry. Anders had spent a decade in Tevinter learning one lesson; where one master slackens their grip, there will always be another to snatch up the chain.

Running would be a useless endeavor. Where would he even go, anyway?

This was his enslavement; a lack of better options.

Anders released a low sigh, slumping backward and tilting his head against the back of his chair. He spent a moment calming his thoughts by tracking specs of dust that fell from the cracks in the grimy ceiling as Danarius no doubt summoned more shades to bring Fenris to heel.

Anders wondered if Varania was taking part in the fight.

It was doubtful; she was strong, sharp, and cruel, but even she couldn’t kill her brother.

She somehow considered leading him around on a leash to be a kinder substitute. Anders would argue,  _had argued_ , that Fenris would prefer death.

They’d snapped at each other, in angry hisses, at length on that subject during the journey to Kirkwall.

But Varania had been beaten down so many times and broken so many years ago that her stubbornness had calcified into armor and no argument, no matter how logical or passionate, could break through. That hadn’t stopped Anders, however, who’d been dragged down so many times, he’d forged his stubbornness into a weapon.

They were the perfect friends; no matter how many arguments they fell into, no matter how often they ripped at each other, their respective armor and weapons prevented them from ever moving on.

Compassion let out a sob, collapsing onto the floor and wailing with her empathetic suffering, and Anders was struck with the horrible impression that Varania had died. He spent a moment in numb misery before reprimanding himself over his reaction.

She set out to entrap and enslave her brother. She would  _deserve_  it. Her death would be  _justice_.

And yet, Varania was a friend Anders couldn’t handle losing and justice didn’t exist.

In the end, Anders wasn’t entirely sure which outcome he preferred for this battle.

Fenris’ death would ultimately mean nothing to him, except that he would have to find a new hobby, since watching Danarius’ increasingly desperate ploys fail would no longer be an option. He might be sad, in the same abstract way he would be sad over Varania, if the stubborn elf died.

Anders snorted humorlessly into the empty room.

If he forced apathy long enough, it might actually settle in. Until then, Compassion fed like a Demon of Gluttony on the roiling emotions at the pit of Anders’ stomach; a fair amount of which was guilt. Mostly guilt, actually.

Guilt because Fenris deserved happiness and Anders was beholden to a man determined to snatch it from him and friends with the girl who thought he would prefer slavery to the diminishing returns of freedom.

But mostly, Anders was guilty over his secret, shameful hope that Fenris would return to Danarius quietly. Because even though Danarius was a madman and Tevinter was sick and Fenris deserved more than a life as a pet, Anders missed that stupid elf in his clinic.

He groaned at the thought and rubbed at his forehead; he was despicable.

Anders would let Fenris be choked and lead around on a collar so he could play hero and heal him. He would condemn a being to slavery because he was  _lonely_.

Compassion emerged from her collapse and shuffled closer to meld her being with Anders, their souls overlapping in the Fade and suffusing the mage with her warmth.

Anders still didn’t know what to make of the battle, nor Fenris himself, but he could admit some fondness, or at least academic interest, for the elf and his story. And, alright, Anders might end up more than a little broken if that story ended with Fenris’ death on the floor of a dirty bar.

Maybe more than a little. Maybe if Fenris died here, Anders’ might as well join him.

 _And what of Danarius’ death?_  a voice sounded in his mind, pitched high with curious and childlike naivety and certainly not his own.

Anders wrinkled his nose at Compassion, who responded by tilting her head upwards to stare at him in confusion. Anders’ perception of her form flitted between the Circle’s senior healer, the most compassionate woman he’d ever known, and a tiny elvhen boy Anders felt needed compassion the most.

Her skin shimmered blue, translucent like all Fade-beings, and when she opened her mouth to speak, only white light shone through. Occasionally, Anders would catch the flash of lyrium whirls and spirals in her skin and wondered how often he had seen to Fenris that he remembered their exact pattern.

At the moment, Compassion was dressed Wynne’s robes, but ragged and bloodied as Fenris’ had been, and her eyes were occasionally firm and wise before flickering to naïve and curious.

Anders liked having her around, in his pathetic desire for company, even if she didn’t understand some of his human quirks like really not wanting to prod at the bruises in his mind.

 _What becomes of the possession_ , she continued in her reedy voice,  _if the possessor dies?_

If Danarius died, Anders could return to his clinic in Minrathous and start paying rent to the new owner. That wouldn’t be so terrible; a life in debt would be closer to freedom then he’d ever been.

Just as Anders felt lighter with that thought, another struck him.

He might be stuck in Kirkwall with no coin, a city which was rapidly becoming his least favorite place in Thedas (sluggishly overtaking everywhere in Tevinter and Kinloch Hold’s dungeon). The taste of blood magic was thick and cloying in the air, sticking to the spirits and making healing a painful endeavor. So far, in all of Kirkwall, only this one little Spirit of Compassion had remained untouched and untainted.

Anders wasn’t sure if her purity was retained through strength of will or an impressive amount of determined ignorance. Either way, she was to be admired.

When the fragile lock on the door jiggled and unfamiliar voices sounded outside, Anders assumed Fenris and Danarius had somehow managed to kill each other (which seemed a just and fitting end to the both of their torturous existences) and now the innkeeper had arrived to claim the magister’s things.

Anders wondered if he was one of those things.

“… And here we are!” an unfamiliar man announced, tone stiff with forced cheer, as he threw open the door. “Now let’s find your contract thing and… oh, hello.”

The man, heavily bearded and absolutely  _dripping with viscera_ , stopped short at the threshold when his wide eyes fell upon Anders. “Uh, do we have the wrong room?” he asked politely, glancing around as if searching for some sort of sign of a magister.

Anders might have laughed at the man’s oddities, if he hadn’t been the size of a young elephant with a staff of equal magnificence clenched in his enormous fist.

“Of course this is the right room! We stole this key off his corpse!” Fenris’ rumbling voice, fluctuating with frustration, called from behind the man.

Anders wondered what emotion he should dredge up now that Fenris had killed Danarius; there wasn’t really anything to grasp at, other than naked shock. Despite his musings, Anders hadn’t been entirely sure that Danarius  _could be_  killed.

“Is there someone in there?” a woman asked, peeking around the man who was still staring awkwardly at Anders, an unsure glint to his gaze. The woman, a beautiful, buxom Rivaini with twin daggers dangling from her belt, shoved her way into the room and her eyes sparkled upon seeing Anders.

“Oh, there is! Look at you!” she perked up, lacking the forced enthusiasm of the man and instead substituting it with a genuine interest in the macabre. “Another budding magister?”

Anders did laugh at that.

“ _Please_ ,” he replied. “Think if I was in charge of this circus, we would be staying  _here_?”

Anders addressed the walls, which may have been painted sometime during the Ancient Age, and the table he sat at, riddled with scratches and mysterious stains, with a sweeping gesture.

The woman laughed joyfully and the man nodded, seemingly pacified that he wouldn’t have to fight another magister, and set about introducing himself.

“I’m Hawke.” Hawke gestured to his chest, maneuvering so Fenris would stop seething in the hallway and step inside. “And that’s Isabela and Fenris. What are you doing here?”

Hawke grinned at Anders as Fenris entered, followed by a dwarf with a handsome crossbow and another human dressed in armor that glittered and seemed about to introduce the new arrivals until he noticed that Anders’ entire attention was focused on Fenris.

The elf seemed to be in the nexus of a wicked headache; he was squinting, eyebrows furrowed and eyes narrowed, and the muscles at his jaw and below his ear twitched with every grind of his teeth. The lyrium under skin pulsed lowly under the thin layer of blood that covered his arms and Anders, under literally any other circumstances, would have laughed at the shuddering squeal Compassion released from the Fade.

Whether her cooing was because Fenris was a being who deserved so much compassion, yet received so little, or because Fade spirits had fetishes for beautiful elves with big swords was unclear. Anders was thankful for her cheer, however, because the contrast shocked him out of his own maudlin thoughts and launched him into speech.

“Do you…” Anders’ mind failed him, words fading away as Fenris bristled, pupils dilating with memory at the sound of his voice.

“Do you remember me?” Anders asked, recalling the varied issues Fenris had with his memory; he hoped whatever visions assaulted Fenris now were of the pleasant variety. Anders often healed the elf after any cruel treatment and had many conversations with him, but Fenris hadn’t strictly  _liked_  him.

It was unlikely he had changed his opinion.

“You are still alive then,” Fenris snapped harshly.

Anders nodded, thinking of saying ‘ _obviously’_  as scathingly as he could manage, but decided against it for the sake of his heart.

“And you are as well.  _He_  isn’t, I imagine?” Anders jerked his head to the bed, where Danarius had lounged before Fenris arrived at the inn and his trap sprung. The book he had been reading still lay at the foot of the bed, resting atop his overcoat, never to be opened by that man again.

Anders still didn’t know how to feel about that.

Fenris dug his clawed gauntlets into his bicep. “Danarius is dead.”

Fenris’ claws pushed further into his leather jerkin, muscles tensing either through restraint or nervousness. The elf released his own arm after the man next to him whispered in his ear with a low tone and comforting Starkhaven baroque, but his talons left five distinct spots of blood. “You are his apprentice now?”

Before Anders could quickly refute that, probably while begging for his life, a yelp rang out from just outside the door.

“He isn’t!” Varania cried from the hall, her voice spiking a relief in Anders so sharp that it left him hollow and dizzy. “He’s a healer, he-”

“I know what he is!” Fenris interrupted with a roar, frustration and fury bleeding together in a manner that made his companions flinch. “Danarius’ healer.” He spat the word with more contempt then most others did and Hawke, who had busied himself with peeling the drying flesh off his intricate armor, glanced up.

“A healer?” Hawke repeated, raising an eyebrow. “Does this mean you don’t have to rearrange his internal organs?”

Anders almost laughed at that hopeful tone, no doubt Fenris’ poor friends (they had to be friends, who else would fight a magister for a homeless elf?) were traumatized enough for the evening.

“That remains to be seen,” Fenris snarled, eyes drifting to the hall where he could likely glower at Varania directly. “You didn’t say he was here.”

Varania walked through the door and Anders released a breath; she was haggard, her hair matted at one side and blood soaked into her tunic, but she wasn’t injured. Her movements were stiff and sudden, awkward for all her usual grace. It wasn’t until another woman, a slight elf with Dalish tattoos and blood seeping slowly from her wrists, followed her in that Anders realized Varania was under the thumb of another blood mage.

 _Welcome to my sad life_ , Anders wanted to coo at her, but managed to keep his lips pressed shut. Impulse control, apparently, was the one talent Tevinter had better luck bludgeoning into Anders than the Templars.

“I thought he’d have been clever enough to run away by now…” Varania, despite trembling with fear, still managed to shoot Anders a disapproving glare. Anders assumed she could replicate that look in her sleep based entirely on muscle memory.

Varania glanced away from Anders guiltily before pushing on, turning back to her brother with a desperate edge in her voice.

“Please, Let…” she stuttered to a halt at Fenris’ snarl, folding inwards. “Please don’t hurt him, he hasn’t done anything, he’s a healer. He helped you. He helps slaves.”

“Varania…” Anders’ voice faded as he flinched away from her; he hadn’t helped anyone. If he had, then Fenris would’ve been free long before Danarius’ knife flayed open his skin. If Anders had really wanted to help Fenris, he wouldn’t have healed him. He’d have mixed Deathroot into his food years ago and left him to die painlessly in his sleep.

Anders’ stare was dragged back to Fenris, along with the entirety of Compassion’s capricious attention, when the elf released a pained groan.

“I remember… I was… happy, I think. You listened…” Fenris recalled, voice sluggish as he rubbed the heel of his palm against his forehead. He seemed almost pacified until a different memory surfaced and his entire being shuddered as his eyes flashed with fury. “But you were  _hers_... You helped Danarius.”

Fenris’ fingers stalled at the three spots of lyrium just under his hairline, pressing into them as if he yearned for a spark of pain to pierce through the haze in his mind. Compassion cried out from the Fade for Anders to heal the poor thing, her visage flickering with grief.

But Anders’ healing had already hurt Fenris enough.

“I did.” His eyes darted downwards, ashamed. He didn’t quite know what Fenris meant when he had hissed “hers” so accusingly, but he was guilty of helping Danarius.

Anders was more than guilty, but he was hardly about to admit to the shame that pained him in the night, when there was nothing else to think about.

 _Maker_ , the image of an elf, writhing and crying on a stone table drenched in blood with long globs of drying lyrium oozing to the floor. Swollen lines, glowing bright with Fade magic, under inflamed and infected skin.

During their stay in a Nevaran inn, Varania had whispered of how the world broke each of them in their own way. Anders immediately thought the Maker concocted two designs against his sanity; the cell under Lake Calenhad and this sobbing little elf, twisted and in pain for no conceivable purpose.

It had been the first week of his “employment”, Danarius had brought Anders down to the laboratory beneath his villa, claiming a desire to see the fantastic Spirit Healing the Southern Circles bragged of. He had a slave who needed healing, the poor thing, and who was Anders to judge their ancient traditions?

Anders had been young then, foolish, and thought that he was being groomed for apprenticeship. Thought that was a good thing.

Because when he first stepped out of Danarius’ opulent carriage, all Anders could see was the wide open villa; a great rectangular structure built around a central pool and garden of winding vines and trees. There was no glass in the windows, no furs heaped high on beds to stave off the Ferelden cold, just intricate grating and silks. The floor tiles were arranged into grand mosaics depicting magisters conquering Qunari and striking down Chantry infantry; an empowering image for a young man who had spent much of his life under the thumb of such infantry.

The air was hot and cloying, but Anders had suffered far worse from the winters in Ferelden. The weather, despite drawing Anders’ strength like _Silence_ , allowed for elfroot and embruim to grow to shocking sizes next to other herbs Anders had only ever seen dried.

Anders was so entranced by the sparkling perfection of the place, turning to gaze upon every new wonder as they walked, he hardly noticed the dark eyes of the slaves hurrying out of their way.

“If you find my gardens enchanting,” Danarius laughed, “you will adore my laboratory.”

“I’m sure I will, Magister Danarius,” Anders replied cheerfully, praising the Maker for the stroke of luck that had brought Anders to a visiting magister’s attention.

The laboratory was built into the basement level of the villa, just under the magister’s main bedroom. Danarius led Anders down a set of winding stairs into a cool, dry cavern illuminated by floating wisps, lyrium runes, and a variety of glowing potions. It all would have taken Anders breath had he not been distracted by the soft sobbing behind a metal door at the end of the cavern.

The iron behemoth loomed out of the cavern’s darkness and the sounds echoing from behind it, hopeless, pleading sobs, filled Anders with a singular dread. The lightness, the sense of freedom that had buoyed him since first arriving in Minrathous, sank into a sick blackness in Anders’ center.

The cynical side of him, the part that always knew that Tevinter was no promised land no matter what beauty the magisters installed into their villas, crowed with victory; a bitter, Pyrrhic victory.

Anders stalled before the door, not wanting to see the horror that lay beyond nor wanting to flee from Danarius’ good graces, and was left staring; the engravings in the door were much like the frescos in the upper floors, but now all Anders could see were the depictions of elves with bent backs behind the swirling robes of their masters.

The voice behind the door let out a cry that grabbed at the healer’s heart and yanked him forward a few stumbling steps.

With his hand on the door, Anders allowed one last shudder; he didn’t want to see his promised land’s dark underbelly, at least not until after he had a chance to enjoy the light.

Impatient, Danarius stepped close behind Anders and opened the doors with a great sweep of his arms, revealed his secondary laboratory.

A table stood in the center of the room, blood and liquid lyrium pooling together at the base, and Anders learned so many lessons in one instant he was left breathless. Because there, atop the carved stone, was a little elf curled into a loose ball.

“I can only imagine your awe, Anders. I doubt your Circle allowed you such studies,” Danarius bragged. “This is my ninth attempt at a lyrium warrior, a  _soporatus_  branded with lyrium to allow access to semi-magical abilities; Fade Walking, as I coin it in my dissertation.”

The image was indescribable;  _gorges_  had been carved into the elf, spirals of flesh left drying on the ground around the table, and within them, a river of lyrium flowed. The outer edges of the lyrium veins had hardened enough to prevent the substance from leaking while the elf’s flesh worked to heal over it, beating uselessly against the foreign object. Infection had set in at several critical points of the body, yellowed pus stirred into the rivers of glowing lyrium and blood. The flesh around those points had gone gangrenous and withered away from the violation.

“He’s not the first to survive this long,” Danarius continued. “There was another before him; from her I learnt the lyrium prevents the body from healing on his own and absorbs all but the most powerful of spells. I sought a Spirit Healer in Kinloch Hold, only to have the old bat deny me!  _Ha_ , as if she would ever accomplish anything of this magnitude.”

Maker, the elf was still  _awake_.

With Danarius’ hand on the small of his back and his voice sounding so far away and muffled, the magister whispered, “It was fate, you know, that I found another in Denerim.”

Rather than sink to his knees and reject the sight as his mind ached to, Anders stumbled forward. As Wynne was so fond of saying, there was healing to be done.

Every step toward the table brought another horrific crime into focus.

The elf couldn’t be more than fifteen. His rich, dark hair was falling away in large clumps. There were gorges of lyrium spiraling halfway up his penis. He was missing all the finger nails on his left hand from his desperate clawing. His foreskin had been cut away and replaced with a pierced broach of Danarius’ sigil. What must have once been a few imperfections, either freckles or a collection of moles, had been burnt off the elf’s shoulders.

The cool of the lyrium and the heat of the blood seeped into Anders’ slippers as he stood before the table, swallowing all his disgust and horror as he raised his hands.

Blood wasn’t new to Anders, neither was the stink of vomit and pus, but the purposeful nature of the damage, the swirling lines that would heal into beautiful mockeries of  _vallaslin_ , spoke of something the young mage hadn’t experienced before. Anders needed to heal the elf, both to prove there was something good in the world but also to cover up the wrongness of it all.

Even in healing, Anders laughed at himself for his selfishness.

The healer took a breath and ran his palms, overflowing with magic, over the shivering elf. He was sobbing names Anders didn’t recognize in a language Anders didn’t understand, but the withering of his flesh and the slow, oozing blood around the veins of lyrium spoke loudly enough.

“Don’t worry.” Anders might have been sobbing as well, he hardly noticed. “Don’t worry, little one, you’ll be alright. I’ll make this alright.”

The elf hadn’t seemed to understand him, but large green eyes were drawn to the soft tone nevertheless. His heavy eyelashes fluttered over an expression that was almost worshipful and Anders had to look away.

The embedded lyrium sucked Anders’ magic into itself while the elf’s inflamed flesh remained bloodied and wrenched. It had taken a summoned Spirit of Love, her rich, gentle voice calming all around her, and a tremendous amount of mana to push past the lyrium and sooth the elf’s pain.

“You’re safe now,” Anders lied as he held his palm over the elf’s bloody neck. Beneath his hand, the infection burned away and the flesh closed over the lyrium, but even as the elf’s sobbing evened out into shallow breathing, Anders didn’t feel the same warmth healing usually elicited. “Everything will be just fine.”

Nothing about this would ever be fine.

The flesh inched over the lyrium, settling the veins into the shapes Danarius intended for them, until nothing but a white line whispered the Fade song that once blared throughout the room. Anders began wiping the pus and blood away from the lines, delicately and with the thin fabric of his sleeve, and brushed the tips of his fingers over the elf’s body to sooth him.

Anders had never really believed in evil before entering the ritual chamber; he had mostly believed in stupid and crazy, characteristics the Templars embodied in spades, and that any being stupid or crazy enough to mutilate or murder another was deserving of only pity.

The cruelties of the Circle were familiar- otherwise good men who thought they stood as the last bastion against unspeakable evil- but this was something beyond misunderstanding or stupidity. This was  _Evil_.

Anders had never taken Evil into account.

There was nothing but sadness now; nothing but a constant, unyielding pulsing of grief that a world existed where a little boy could be tortured for an experiment and a man existed to torture him.

And yet Anders stood firm and uncorrupted until, when he finished wiping the bloody froth from the corners of cracked lips, the elf reached out with trembling fingers and clutched the fabric at his wrist and  _smiled_.

The elf whispered something and his clouded eyes went soft once they found Anders’, crinkling at the corners as the elf’s lips lifted with delight.

The expression didn’t last long before those eyes rolled backward and the elf drifted into the Fade, but the flicker was enough to break Anders.

The boy’s face was so sweet, so thankful that someone had healed instead of hurt, overjoyed by the basic standard of decency. Everything was so  _wrong_.

_Evil, vile, abominable._

The room fell into darkness as Anders’ wisps fled or risked corruption from their conjurer’s grief. Danarius was forced to kill the Spirit of Love as she corrupted herself into a Demon of Obsession and fell on the magister with an inhuman shriek.

Anders slumped over the unconscious elf; drained, empty,  _horrified_.

 _Maker_ , Anders sobbed.  _I wish he’d cursed me_.

With his newfound knowledge of Evil, Danarius’ hand on his shoulder and the elf’s smile still etched into his mind’s eye, the affirmations of how valuable Anders was, how valuable his Spirit Healing was, all felt like threats.

Of course something so valuable would never be allowed to go free.

Anders sobbed his apologies into the magister’s robes while he cried how he couldn’t be Danarius’ apprentice if this was what the duty entailed,  _he couldn’t do this_. Danarius had been kind, understanding even, and offered a compromise. It was an idea that seemed to pop into the man’s head, something clever that could work out for the both of them.

Anders couldn’t believe he’d ever been so stupid.

The magister, as it turned out, owned numerous buildings in Minrathous, one of which was a townhouse (an  _insula_ , Anders’ mind supplied) just off a forum that Danarius could allow the young healer to practice out of.

The magister was a philanthropist of some renown and would hate for such talent to go to waste, after all.

Anders could operate a clinic out of the first two floors, keep the third as his own, and Danarius would collect rent through his profits. He would heal Danarius’ new creation at his master’s discretion, but otherwise never have to see him again.

Anders would never have to see Templars brandishing whips or broken slaves brandishing smiles ever again.

Kneeling in the blood and the lyrium and fresh from the humiliation of sobbing into a magister’s robes, Anders felt lighter than he had any right to.

The clinic was like nothing the Circle ever offered him; it was filled to the brim with scalpels, silk thread and cat gut, needles, forceps and other shining instruments even the Chantry hadn’t bothered to purchase. There was a reception hall and a collection of small examination rooms on the first floor and two surgeries and long-term patient rooms on the second.

Anders’ patients were generally clumsy apprentices, well-to-do  _laetan_  or freemen, their mistresses, and their more expensive slaves. Occasionally a slave would appear at Anders’ back door, shivering and biting their lip and asking if he was the healer, and Anders would heal for nothing.

Anders had no slaves to his name but as a gesture of goodwill, Danarius sent a slave of his own to tend to Anders and the house. The old woman, named Minerva, had a quick wit to her and a bite in her words, traits that made it easy for Anders to imagine she wasn’t a slave. 

If he pretended hard enough, she might have been a guardian who remained and cared for him out of love. She ate with Anders and slept on the same floor; she often checked in on him and chatted when he wasn't with a patient.

Minerva, as it turned out, was a dreadful gossip. “Was that Magister Amladaris’ daughter?” she would whisper cheekily as she brought Anders his tea between patients. “Whatever did she need?”

Anders, who was twice the dreadful gossip, would answer. “Well, she just  _happened_  to have the same venereal disease as- ah, damn, what’s his name? Nihalias’ third son, you know, the one with the mole? Anyway, me thinks they’ve been visiting the same bathhouse, if you catch my meaning.”

“Oh you wicked boy,” Minerva would always say as she laughed and smacked his shoulder, which never failed to bring a smile to Anders’ face.

It was, for a time, the every bit the perfect deal it seemed.

Anders had the freedom to come and go as he pleased, so long as that coming and going amounted to returning. It was no trial to return, however; the townhouse was monolithic and beautiful, pillars of chiseled black stone and sharp edges, not unlike the Tower, if one discounted the high windows that faced out over the open forum across the road or the herb garden out back, nestled between the houses.

While the first two floors were taken up by the clinic itself, the third was entirely Anders’. His rooms were sensible (Anders feared the cold opulence of Danarius’ mansion) and filled with books the Chantry banned hundreds of years ago. The windows were large and faced the rising sun, with his bed positioned just beneath them.

It was almost as if the room had been designed to appeal specifically to Anders.

 _Maker_ , Anders had difficulty believing  _anyone_  could’ve been that stupid.

Anders was enslaved in a different way, a way that couldn’t be reviled or cursed or abolished because it was his own fault.

It should’ve become obvious once Anders realized he was the only healer Danarius called upon to tend to his lyrium warrior, on the rare occasion that the elf was injured or for checkups early into his creation.

Three months after meeting him for the first time, Anders bent over the trembling elf, choosing to focus on the new sprouts of brittle, white hair instead of his downcast, terrified eyes and asked, “What’s your name?”

“I’ve taken to calling him Fenris.” Danarius answered from across the room as he flipped through one of Anders’ books. “I’m rather enraptured by elvhen, at the moment.”

“No, I mean… alright. Fenris, can you see the vase at the other side of the room?” Anders pointed to a large clump of spindleweed planted in a porcelain pot. “Can you tell me the designs and color, please?”

Fenris’ eyes trembled as his shoulders hunched up around his ears. His gaze was trained resolutely on the geometric patterns of Anders’ rug.

“Fenris,” Danarius scolded. “Answer the healer.”

Fenris’ eyes immediately flashed up to the vase. “White. Blu, blue pattern.” His words were clumsy and his voice thick and ragged with disuse. “Li… lines of di, different pattern. Golems, buildings…”

“Good,” Anders said just to stop that horrible sound. “Very good eyesight.”

Danarius looked pleased as he placed the book back in the shelf. “Always perfect for your master.”

The expression on Fenris’ face was nothing short of  _euphoric_.

Even after working up the courage to speak, Fenris was never excellent company when Anders had him on his examination table; he clearly associated needing healing with being punished for needing healing and kept his lips pursed shut and eyes furiously downcast.

Or perhaps he had no idea how to act outside of Danarius’ sphere of influence; the slave often glanced towards the ceiling or the door, as if he hoped his master was waiting upstairs or just outside in the hall. It reminded Anders of healing a child without their mother present, a similarity that filled his stomach with molten lead.

It was understandable. After all, Fenris only retained the memories of his short months with Danarius. He was, by all accounts, a child.

Danarius wasn’t just his master, he was his  _creator_.

Anders felt sick with the thought every time it flitted across his mind.

They remained cautious of each other, although expressed this caution with stern silence, on Fenris’ part, and nervous blathering, on Anders’.

It took nearly a year of sporadic interaction before one of Anders’ random observations (“How can an idiot like that hold a seat on the Magisterium? She uses her brain so little, I’m surprised her body doesn’t reject it like a foreign object!”) managed to pull a wry smirk and a raised eyebrow from Fenris.

The elf was so impassive, Anders was unashamed to admit that he considered the slight eyebrow quirk to be their first conversation.

“Better watch out, you’re starting to develop a personality!” Anders laughed, running his finger over the thin line across Fenris’ shoulder, formerly a gaping wound.

“You have developed enough of one for the both of us,” the elf replied, his voice rumbling deep in his chest and Anders’ smile cracked into a wide grin. He looked up so suddenly, Fenris didn’t have enough time to avert his gaze and their eyes met for a moment.

The elf’s eyes were unfathomably green. It was pleasant until Anders remembered how they had crinkled at the corners when he smiled and was the first to look away.

“Why Fenris!” Anders laughed suddenly, causing to elf to flinch but desperate to turn away from the memory. “Some cultures might even call that a joke! Unfortunately, that culture would be the Qun, who aren’t well renowned for their sense of humor.”

Fenris’ eyes dragged across the floor until he was staring at Anders’ chin in confusion. Clearly the healer’s enthusiasm over having an actual conversation gave away too little, or perhaps too much. Fenris drew his legs over the side of bed and up to his chest, clearly uncomfortable, but stated, “You are an odd mage.”

Anders was about to reply to the cryptic statement, only to have Fenris scowl at the floor and continue, “You do not know how things are.” He then looked Anders over as if to reaffirm that the man who just healed him with magic was in fact a mage. “And you are not a slave. Why are you not in the Circle?”

“Danarius,” Anders replied shortly, looking away.

At the beginning of the arrangement, although Anders was aware that Danarius set his rates, scheduled his appointments, and collected his payments into an account Anders never saw, the magister also didn’t collect rent and paid his tenant’s bar tab so Anders assumed they pretty much broke even.

It still felt like a choice.

Had Anders been a bit smarter, he would have seen past his own desperate clinging to an imaginary ideal and realized Danarius was hoarding debt like a loan shark.

The practice of bond slavery on humans,  _nexum_ , had been abolished hundreds of years ago. But then again, so had blood magic.

It was an embarrassingly long time before Anders realized it was only through Danarius that the Black Divine’s Templars hadn’t dragged him back to the Circle. It was a longer time still before Anders realized just how few choices that actually left him.

That was how a handful of mages ruled an empire of slaves and impoverished citizens; the illusion of choice kept them docile until the chains closed around their necks.

Anders was subdued after the revelation. He tried to run; he lost count of the amount of times he’d made it to the gates with a full pack slung over his shoulder only to have his throat fill with bile and find himself back in his room an hour later, stressed and panicking until old Minerva arrived with tea and a kind word.

“Where would you even go?” she would say as she flattened Anders’ fly-away hair. “You are safe here.”

Despite his claustrophobia, Anders knew she was right. It was the choice between the Templars and Danarius’ twisted protection, and the magister knew that.

It wasn’t just Templars and dungeons and whips that kept men imprisoned.

Clenching his fists against the fabric of his desk chair- selected and paid for by Danarius- Anders glanced back at the elf, stubbornly meeting him in the eye despite the other’s attempts to look literally everywhere else.

“Danarius,” he repeated grimly.

Fenris nodded, both agreeing and completely misunderstanding. “Master is wise.” He nodded again, relaxing somewhat into the padded table, dangling one leg over the edge. “Why are you not the Master’s apprentice?”

 _You_.

Anders shrugged instead. “I’m not a battlemage and I don’t know any blood magic.”

Fenris furrowed his eyebrows, folding his leg over the other and pressing his elbows against his thighs to tilt closer to Anders. “That is not fatal, you may learn,” he joked, although the humor was lessened by his determination to avoid eye contact. “You are a powerful mage. I have never seen another able to heal as you do. And Master says you serve very important patrons.”

Anders began packing the dried elfroot away, obvious enough so Fenris knew the healing was completed, but not so obvious that the elf would think he was unwelcome to stay. He wanted to force a choice from Danarius’ doll.

“I’m not powerful, I’m just a different kind of mage. See, being a blood mage is kind of exclusive with being a Spirit Healer. The denizens of the Fade are a bit fussy when it comes to that point.”

“But uniqueness is just as valuable,” that  _word_  again, “as power. You should apply for apprenticeship of the Master.” Fenris paused, clearly misunderstanding Anders’ status in Tevinter society, before pushing on. “You would be very successful and I would rather service a healer than…” He cut himself off with a grunt and a tug at his hair, careful to avoid slandering Hadriana’s name.

Anders heard it clearly regardless. He healed more of her slaves than any other, unable to turn them away when they arrived, beaten and bloodied and sobbing, at his back door.

The healer was concerned he was getting a reputation among the slaves as their patron healer. (He was and he did).

“She’s a right cunt,” Anders supplied when Fenris looked about ready to start flogging himself over the slip.

Fenris then asked Anders to explain this word, blanching in horror at the definition and Anders’ sly grin. The elf’s limited experience with Trade stunting that conversation, but opening up an entirely new one.

They weren’t quite friends, since Anders doubted Fenris even considered the existence of anyone who wasn’t his master, much less his relationship with them. Yet, from then on, Fenris sat at the examination table long after Anders had finished healing him and when he was delirious with fever, body prone to attacking the lyrium in confusion, it was always Anders who was summoned to Danarius’ estate.

Sitting in Danarius’ empty room at the Hanged Man, Anders hoped it was the memory of their banter in the clinic the elf recalled, not the pain that brought him there in the first place.

“I healed you after his, ah, experiment,” Anders prompted, being intentionally vague. “I’m surprised you remember.”

Fenris shook his head. “No, in Carastes… when she… when  _that bitch_ …” His impossibly green eyes rose to sear into Anders’, who flinched backwards despite himself. “You helped her!”

Anders bristled at the sudden rage in Fenris voice, finally feeling his own fear degrade into anger in response. Anders had a surplus of anger, formed into an iron center underneath his humor and fear, but it was always there when he needed the strength. He could match Fenris, easily.

“Her?” Anders repeated. “I only met Varania after you escaped, are you…?” He paused, eyes widening as he leaned forward in his chair. “Are you talking about Hadriana?”

Fenris flinched at her name. “Yes!” he thundered, the Fade roaring to life as the elf’s form glowed transparent. Fenris started forward despite Hawke’s cry and Varania’s shriek for mercy. “You made everything worse!”

“I never helped Hadriana!” Anders stood as well, willing to meet the elf nose to nose if necessary. He was never one to allow insult and he already burned with fight, furious that whatever memory Fenris managed to recall of him was one of rage when Anders thought they had been some kind of friends. “I  _would_  never! She was a horrid cunt! I’m probably the only person happier about her death than you!”

Fenris groaned, grabbing at his hair like he had in the clinic, when he’d needed to remind himself of his place. “No…”

“Fenris, please,” Varania sobbed, frightening Anders with her tears. He had never seen her so vulnerable before, it wasn’t in her nature, and he felt like averting his eyes respectfully. Instead, Anders fell back into his chair and buried his face in his hands while all the strength drained out of him. “He’s not like… He told me not to come here, he… he’s good. Please don’t hurt him.”

Fenris rounded on her like a dog with a scent. “ _Shut up!_ ”

“Daisy, take her to my room!” the dwarf shouted and the tiny slip of an elf squeaked fearfully and jerked Varania backwards through the door like an uncooperative marionette, clumsily knocking into the wall and jostling Ander’s coat onto the floor. “Come on now, Broody, we’re just here for your contract. We just want you to be free.” The dwarf’s voice was low and steady, his eyes intense but filled with a strange sort of grief at a friend’s suffering. “That’s all any of us want.”

“You know where it is, right?” Hawke asked Anders, stepping between Fenris and the healer.

“The contract isn’t here. A piece of paper hardly matters anyway, you don’t need it,” Anders explained, throwing an elbow over the back of his chair and glancing around the room as Fenris’ companions dwindled. “I can alter Danarius’ will instead, freeing you on his death.”

Anders paused, wondering if he should continue talking to this Hawke, rather than to Fenris, who was a freeman and perfectly capable of speaking for himself.

Just to make his point, Anders stood and leaned around Hawke to address Fenris. “You know you need the Magisterium’s acknowledgment, right? Otherwise you’ll just pass onto whoever Danarius willed you to.”

“I know!” Fenris replied, harsher then he meant to, given his embarrassed glare toward the corner of the room.

Anders continued addressing Fenris, if only to embarrass him, once it became obvious neither the dwarf nor Hawke would allow him to kill any more mages.

“Then you know you’ll need my signature,” he continued. “I’m Danarius’ healer. I can claim he was incapacitated through illness and unable to sign, and appoint myself as his witness.”

“So I will only be free through  _a mage’s_  subterfuge.” Fenris sneered with the word, as if it was a sick taste he needed to spit out.

“You’ll be free, though,” Isabela pointed out, emerging from her spot digging through Danarius’ trunk. “Plus, we really did all the work, you know, with killing the piece of shit and whatnot. What’s one more guy pulling the weight?”

Fenris grunted, but didn’t disagree.

Anders took his chance and continued, “I’ll send the altered will to Danarius’ attorney, freeing you. Any crocked city official can sign the death certificate, altering the date of death a few months forward, then I’ll send that to the Magisterium and tell them he’s died.” Anders stared Fenris down until green eyes met his. “I’ll tap you on the head with my staff and you’ll be a  _liberatus_.”

Fenris stewed in those thoughts, looking almost disbelieving with his wide eyes and open expression. Anders sympathized; freedom was only just becoming real to him, the implications tumbling down on the elf’s unprepared and already burdened shoulders like an avalanche.

Perhaps through a desire to move the conversation away from his vulnerable friend, the man in shining armor stepped forward and quirked an eyebrow at Anders.

“You were the magister’s personal healer?” he asked, bizarrely conversational considering the circumstances. Although, perhaps casual discussions after grueling battles were familiar to these madmen. Fenris and Hawke were still drenched in blood, after all.

Anders hummed and nodded. “Somewhat, I practice-  _practiced_  out of a building he owned. He called upon me whenever Fenris was ill. He’s a tricky patient.”  He worked to keep himself from sounding too fond, but by the smirks shared by Isabela and Hawke, he hadn’t quite managed it. “Since the grand escape, I’ve moved into the Minrathous estate.”

 _To wait for Fenris’ return_ , went unsaid. The fewer startling confessions on Anders’ sin, the better.

The knight from Starkhaven braved on. “Oh? He required your services often, then? Was he plagued by illness?”

“He had heart trouble,” Anders replied without thinking.

“Heart trouble, I’d imagine.” Hawke also replied without thinking.

The two mages grinned at each other, delighted at their shared joke, until Fenris snarled and they were forced to look away and play innocent.

“This is a very serious matter,” the Starkhaven knight scolded, shooting Isabela and the dwarf particularly nasty looks.

“Right,” Isabela replied in an unnaturally high pitched voice. “Of course. Not funny.”

“Not even a little bit,” the dwarf agreed and was either overcome with a sudden case of sinus trouble or was doing a particularly bad job of hiding his snickering.

“ _So_ ,” Anders announced, trying for nonchalance but landing soundly in nervous blathering. “Do we have an accord?”

“Yeah, of course,” Hawke replied, before noticing that Anders was addressing Fenris. He grinned softly, proud in an odd way, and stepped aside for Fenris to take his place.

The elf blinked a few times, confused, before marching forward and settling back into his rigid posture and impassive expression.

“Yes,” Fenris agreed. “Yes, we have an accord.”


	2. The Fugitive's Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris remembers a friend and a traitor and isn't entirely sure where one ends and the other begins.

The evening following Danarius’ death had been… chaotic.

Fenris existed in the nexus of a flurry of activity, but was otherwise numb to it. Confused and isolated, lost in his flood of exhausted thoughts, his friends picked up his slack.

How odd.

Varric had been at his elbow almost the entire fight, occationally darting about to avoid the guards and shades, but a permanent fixture at his back. Hawke stood atop the bar, drawing all the attention to himself as he rained fire and ice down on Danarius.

They were strong, magnificent and powerful as always, but overrun. Danarius was cunning and his guards well trained and their tactic, to drag the battle out, brought the head warrior to his knees.

Fenris considered surrendering, thoughts of Sebastian’s armor rent and Isabela’s insides splayed open on the tavern’s dirty floor filling his mind. He called out “master” only once before Isabela was shielding him from both the guard’s attacks and Danarius’ wicked smile.

She did not leave him. None of them left him.

 _What a strange thing_.

In the end, it had been a chair thrown by Merrill, drained of both mana and blood and all other options, which had found the weak point in Danarius’ shield. It was Isabela who broke through with an ululating battle cry and brought her daggers into the magister’s shoulders.

Sebastian had won Fenris’ unending loyalty when he punched Danarius in the face with his bow.

They parted like the Waking Sea before Andraste’s army as Fenris approached.

Everything went a bit foggy after that.

There was Hawke’s hand on his shoulder, Danarius’ heart in his hand. Fenris remembered shouting something at Merrill that made the little thing cry, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what he said. Then there was Varric, hand on his wrist, preventing him from killing Varania with softly spoken warnings.

Varania, who he wanted so badly to love as his memories urged. Varania, who betrayed him to his master. Who called him Leto and claimed he had fought for his markings, that he _wanted_ his slavery.

Varania, who Fenris allowed to be made into Merrill’s thrall until he could come to a decision.

Whoever decided to find Danarius’ room and see if there was anything to ease the legality of Fenris’ freedom was suddenly the recipient of several curses from the elf.

When Hawke had stalled in the door, Fenris hadn’t expected to hear Anders’ dulcet Ferelden lilt already making off-color jokes with Isabela.

The first thing Fenris noticed, however strange and superficial, was how the healer had aged. Anders was half a decade older, Fenris rationalized, and humans did tend to age faster, but to have grey hair at the temples and trenches between the eyebrows made him look so _different_.

He could imagine the interaction; “What are you now, forty?” Fenris wanted to mock, if only to hear Anders’ exaggerated gasp and penchant for dramatics. The healer would have his hand pressed over his heart with false indignity as he exclaimed, “How _dare_ you.”

Instead Fenris’ head had filled with fog and he had only managed to stammer angrily.

After agreeing to the mage’s proposition, Fenris slumped down onto the straw bed to hold his head in his hands and question everything. Why was the healer helping him? Was he merely seeking to save his own skin?

The Anders who Fenris often imagined would have done such a thing to earn their freedom, but the healer whose friendship had turned bittersweet was nothing more than a fabrication. A game by cruel minds overpowered with fire at their fingertips and potency in their blood.

Varric and Sebastian immediately went about questioning the mage while Isabela returned to her task of rifling through Danarius’ things, occasionally pulling out an object and asking Fenris if she could keep it or if he wanted everything burned. Fenris allowed her to collect the trinkets.

With no idea as to what his first action as a freeman should be, he tended toward inaction.

Everything suddenly felt too large for him; pathetically, he longed for the simplicity of slavery, when his only concern had been _reacting_. He had no idea how to act on his own, how to plan and scheme like a freeman ought to. Danarius’ death hadn’t fixed anything; it had only brought the world to a head to blindside an already struggling elf.

Fenris had no idea what he was doing.

“Existential crisis?” Hawke asked once he finished with Anders, leaving the confusing healer with Sebastian. Although his joking was as annoying as always, Hawke’s firm voice and light tone drew a smile from Fenris. He was a good friend, always able to pull brightness out of thin air, even when all else seemed bleak.

“I am unsure,” Fenris admitted.

“Well, that sounds like an existential crisis.”

“No,” Fenris corrected with a weak laugh. “I am unsure of what existential means.”

“Uh…” Hawke’s eyebrows knitted together. “I actually don’t either, but I’m pretty sure it means that you’re stewing over your future. Or, your existence, or something. I don’t know.” He waved his hand absently, nearly catapulting Fenris into the air as he fell onto the bed. “I’ll ask Varric once he’s done interrogating Anders and Varania.” Hawke trailed off, eyeing Fenris for a reaction at the mention of his sister.

When there was none, other than a slight tightening around his jaw, Hawke continued, “What exactly do you want to do with her?”

“I… liked Varric’s thought of delivering her to Aveline,” Fenris answered, defaulting to Varric’s opinion in absence of his own and embarrassed over his indecision. “To identify those who helped Danarius and are loyal to the Imperium in Kirkwall.”

“Good, me too. And, uh,” Hawke gestured to Anders, “that one?”

Fenris glanced at Anders again; this time, his attentions caught on the mage’s clothing. He was as scruffy as ever, Fenris noted as his gaze darted to the rumpled coat on the floor. It was the same damn coat, although the feathers, tired and grey five years ago, had been replaced by a sleek black bird’s.

Why the mage chose to wear feathers (and didn’t that just bring Fenris to tears; Anders _chose_ to dress like that) when they had gone out of style in Tevinter thirty years before Fenris was even born was a mystery, but Fenris found it suited his appeal. The green half coat had once looked hilarious over Anders’ sleek, black robes; Fenris remembered the warmth of teasing the mage over the mismatch.

Fenris’ gauntlets creaked with the direction of his thoughts; the mage was not his friend, he should have known that by now.

“I am unsure.”

“Okay, which of those words didn’t you understand?” Hawke grunted when Fenris knocked his elbow against his friend’s stomach. “Alright, alright. Let’s stick with Anders. We can’t keep him locked up in Varric’s suit forever, where would we play Wicked Grace?”

“The manor, perhaps,” Fenris replied, mirroring Hawke’s tendency to deflect sincere conversations with sarcasm. “It would certainly relieve me of having to carry all your coin back to Hightown.”

“Oh.” Hawke ignored Fenris’ attempts at levity. “That’s another thing, what are you going to do about the mansion?”

Fenris put his face in his hands and groaned.

Luckily, he was saved from thinking of his future by the banter brewing between Sebastian, Varric and Anders.

“… It’s just weird that you’ve got Andraste’s face on your crotch, is all I’m saying. It’s like she’s judging me for staring.”

“Well, you _are_ staring at his crotch.”

“Oh great, now there’s a dwarf judging me too.”

Hawke sighed and moved away to mediate while Fenris felt the flash of memory; the mage always spoke with the lightness of his words disguising the burning anger behind them. He hadn’t recognized it early into their _association_ , but now all memories of their conversations were tainted with the realization.

Fenris wanted to pull his legs against his chest and hide away because he _remembered_.

He remembered too many things; humiliating things that withered in his stomach, words he’d spoken with no understanding of their meaning, actions he’d performed so willingly they made his face flush in mortification.

He recalled the fervor he’d followed Danarius’ orders with, when the orders were reprehensible or struck him as wrong. He couldn’t disguise the sensations of emotions any longer, not when the images danced in mockingly clarity before him.

 _Although_ , Fenris thought with a quick glare toward the healer still engaged with Sebastian in a contest of mockery, _I am not the only one who disguises memories_.

How could the mage pretend he had not always been Hadriana’s puppet? Listening for the secrets sick and crying slaves confided in him, only to turn and whisper into that bitch’s ear?

Anders didn’t even understand the ruination his cruelty wrought. Fenris seethed at the thought of Hadriana sending her slaves to the healer, to appear as a balm for their wounds only to betray their confidence when she gleefully reopened them.

Was it some kind of game to him, or could he simply not comprehend the effect of his betrayal? Did he not understand there could be no true darkness until a slave caught sight of the light?

Fenris held back a growl, throat closing up to keep silent, at the memory of Anders at his bedside. So many times it occurred, when Fenris had been injured and weak, further lulled into vulnerability by the healer’s gentle mockery and firm insistence of companionship.

Fenris’ stomach churned with rage at the memories. Or, in defiance of the happiness the memories elicited.

Anders had been his friend. His first friend. His _only_ friend for all those years.

Or, as close a thing to friendship as a being with no ownership of themselves was capable of forming. They spoke long and often, and Fenris found that he enjoyed the human’s company in a way he hadn’t thought to enjoy another’s existence.

It was like an imaginary world, in the clinic, and Anders, his imaginary friend. There, Fenris forgot the reality that existed outside, unless it was to tell Anders of his experiences.

He’d taken to the friendship like the infant he had been; desperate for Anders’ interest in his life, the proof of the importance of his being, and for Anders’ various, open expressions, which Fenris felt reflected in him a thousand fold.

When Anders had smiled, Fenris felt the flood of joy rush through him. He had never known another being capable of inspiring such emotion in him.

Aside from the being who owned him, of course. But didn’t that just make Anders all the more astounding?

Now Fenris understood the sharing of emotions was a normal sensation in companionship, but at the time, it had felt revolutionary.

Like a child in his desperation to solicit those reactions, Fenris had often bragged to Anders; casually bringing up his own exploits to see that quirked eyebrow signifying interest or the amused mockery that demanded mockery in return.

Generally, they were innocuous; Fenris often mentioned, in forced nonchalance, how a gladiator’s master complimented his style or how the other slaves averted their eyes when he passed.

He had an overwhelming need for Anders to validate his existence.

“Master has taken me to bed,” Fenris once boasted, completely unprompted, one afternoon when he was heady with the proof of his superiority over other slaves and being so adored by his Master. It was late into their friendship and they’d spoken of other personal topics, so Fenris felt he could be forgiven for being so brazen. “More than once.”

Anders, who had been fiddling with his satchel’s buttons in search of a deep mushroom, yanked so hard on the fabric that the contents of dried roots and herbs scattered across the floor. The healer paid no mind to the mess, choosing to instead stare at Fenris with wide, frightened eyes. His blond eyebrows pressed upwards, nearly inverting themselves, as his lips parted in horror.

Anders’ disturbed reaction seemed a normal thing to Fenris _now_.

To the young slave on the examination table, however, it had not been.

Fenris immediately thought to backtrack, change the subject, but there was no subject to change as Anders was absolutely silent with his unwavering stare. Fenris had leaned away, drawing his knees to his chest, and made an assumption that he now found to be nearly as humiliating as being proud that his _owner_ had taken him into his bed.

He thought Anders was jealous.

Of _course_ Anders would be jealous; after all, who wouldn’t be? Who wouldn’t want to be so valued by the only being who mattered in all the world?

He wanted Anders to know of his worth but instead he’d made Anders feel undervalued as a possession, as Fenris often felt when he was punished. Anders was one of Danarius’ as well, and their Master had never taken the healer to bed. Fenris, in his bumbling cruelty, had _upset his only friend_.

Fenris hadn’t wanted that. He wanted Anders to be impressed with him and to understand Fenris’ value as his Master now did.

This had gone all wrong.

Fenris intended to apologize for his cruelty and try to make Anders understand that he hadn’t intended to upset him and he would never bring it up again.

Unfortunately, words had never been Fenris’ strong suit.

“I… I am sorry, I did not intend… I thought you might find it…” Fenris started at the floor. “I will not speak of it again, if it upsets you. I am sorry.”

“Don’t…” Anders croaked. “Don’t apologize.” A small smile, at odds with his downcast eyes, stretched across his face. “It’s not your fault. You don’t ever have to apologize for things that aren’t your fault.”

Fenris shifted, embarrassed by his blunder but cheered by the healer’s understanding, and hurried to fill a void in the conversation that had never existed before.

He told the mage other personal things instead, still fearful of upsetting him but needing that validation of his existence that only another being could provide.

Fenris shared his thoughts, sometimes the things he’d done because Danarius asked it even if he hadn’t wanted to. Because he thought Danarius wanted it.

Secrets he kept even from his master.

Fenris whispered of how sick he felt, watching the recently executed Lady Locusta thrash helpless at Danarius’ feet after he’d torn out her baby (The fleshy thing fit in the palm of his hand like a heart; “It was t, too li, little.”), or when he stared at the dying boy, hardly older than seven, as he was bled dry during a duel (the boy had been eerily silent as he stared directly at Fenris; “I wish he had cried.”)

Anders would offer a small smile, comforting in his way, and absolved Fenris of his sins. Once, after hearing one of his stories, Anders kissed his temple, shocking and terrifying Fenris. However, the action was innocent, like Fenris imagined a mother’s would be, and wasn’t repeated after Anders caught the slave’s expression.

“It’s alright,” Anders would lie every time. “It wasn’t your fault.”

But Danarius always seemed to know of these insecurities and would bring them up while alone, something Fenris originally attributed to his master’s shrewd intelligence and accepted as proof of Danarius’ unwavering interest in him ( _stupidstupidstupid_ ).

He had never once considered the healer capable of disloyalty.

 _Of course I hadn’t_ , Fenris thought to himself. He never thought Danarius capable of cruelty, even when he ripped arteries open and bled slaves like pigs. As willfully blind to Danarius’ nature until he held _her_ heart in his hand- _after they sheltered him_ \- as he was to Anders’.

It seemed Fenris could only embrace truth once it danced naked in front of him.

And the truth of Anders’ cruelty practically had.

The healer had been summoned all the way from Minrathous to Danarius’ summer villa in Carastes, requested by Fenris during one of his fever dreams. He hadn’t known of the healer’s hidden cruelty then- should have expected it- otherwise he would have suffered in silence.

How could he think a mage would sooth the wounds another of his kind wrought?

“Don’t be frightened, my pet,” Danarius smiled, allowing Fenris to bask in his glow even when the slave wasn’t presentable. It had only been weeks before their departure for Serehon, and Fenris still labored under the sickening, humiliating delusion that he was special to his master. “The healer should arrive soon.”

And Anders had, rushing in like a demon was on his heels, and Fenris wanted to laugh.

If Fenris was unpresentable, stripped down to his tunic and sweating in the stifling heat, then the mage was a walking disaster.

His long hair was pushed haphazardly up against his cheek while the rest was corralled into a ponytail, his trousers were wrinkled and dirty as if he’d run the entire road from Minrathous. He’d apparently abandoned the idea of a tunic entirely, and would’ve been bare without his ever-present monstrosity of a coat, feathers slumping heavily over one bare shoulder.

The healer was endearingly disheveled, rushed out of bed to attend to a patient. Like some pudgy Circle Mage late for class or some such nonsense.

Fenris didn’t act often, but all the decisions he made before the Fog Warriors expected it of him had been based on impulse. Decisions brought on by sudden sparks of necessity in battle- kill the thief sneaking behind you, even without Danarius’ order- yank out his heart if the battle gets too rough.

At that moment, his only emotion was overwhelming fear ( _dying alone and burning up in the dark_ ) and the impulse was to grab Anders.

Fenris was feverish; he reached for the mage when he approached Danarius and another attending physician, a poor old slave whose experience in healing had been spurned by both Danarius and Fenris in favor of the Spirit Healer. His hands closed around Anders’ coat and, with his enhanced strength, Fenris yanked the poor idiot on top of him.

The mistake had been glaring; touching another, _a freeborn mage_ , before his master.

Fenris hardly remembered doing it, and retained no memories of what transpired directly after, only remembering awakening to find Hadriana lurking outside his door in the morning. Fenris almost cried out; Danarius had ordered that she keep away from him during his illness and Anders always made a point to loudly suffer in her presence.

But the cry died in his throat when he saw how she held Anders against the door frame. Another spike of terror burned through him ( _would she hurt Anders?_ ) before Fenris noticed the way the two smirked at each other.

 _No_ , he thought desperately. _She could not have him._ _That one was his friend_.

But were they friends?

Fenris thought they were friends, and of course that was a delusion. None of Danarius’ other slaves liked him, thought him arrogant and cruel, how could Anders, a mage who was born free, educated, and powerful, have possibly desired his friendship?

Anders was Hadriana’s. He was not his own man, tricked and trapped into alliance as he first seemed, but an extension of Hadriana.

Another slave of _hers_ , one who smiled to disguise the cruelty within, like that awful, old bitch Minerva.

“Oh,” Anders laughed, low and conspiring, slippery like he only allowed when he thought no one but his Mistress was watching. “He adores me,” Fenris’ stomach lurched with embarrassment. Was he not supposed to adore his friend? “Slanders Master Danarius whenever I put my hands on him. Sickening, isn’t it?”

“How pathetic!” Hadriana hummed in agreement, eyes trained on Fenris, forcing his eyes back to the ground. “A slave,” she sneered, causing Fenris to flinch because, although he might act superior, that’s all he really was, “and a mage! Even one as barbaric as you.” Fenris had heard that low pitched, sly tone enough times to know what came next.

He looked away before they kissed.

Fenris realized he had the same impulse to avert his eyes even now, staring stubbornly at the mage’s coat, which somehow survived nearly a decade, to avoid watching Hawke join Varric and Anders in their discussion. At some point, Sebastian must’ve tired of the backstabbing, cruel, _heartless_ mage and approached him, because Fenris felt the warmth of his hand on his shoulder.

He tensed, couldn’t prevent himself from cringing away even from a trusted friend’s touch, and something shameful shuddered under his skin.

“Fenris,” Sebastian spoke, always looking him in the eyes to draw his friend back to himself. “Hawke is taking Varania to Aveline, as you requested. We’ll leave whenever you’re ready,” he paused, glanced back towards Anders. “What do you wish we do with him?”

Fenris thought to turn him over to the Circle- the mage couldn’t conspire against him with a sun branded into his forehead- but brushed the idea away when it burned in his throat. If Danarius had asked him for Anders’ secrets, the weaknesses implied in shuddering stories of confinement in the southern Circle and haunting chases through the woods of Ferelden, Fenris would have betrayed the mage in an instant.

He wouldn’t have seen it as a betrayal, of course, because such cognitive dissidence was necessary for a slave, but that was what it would have amounted to.

Perhaps the mage was as enthralled with Hadriana as Fenris had been with Danarius; perhaps that was the reason for his sudden hatred of her now. After their separation, he must have distanced himself from who she molded him to be.

Maybe he misremembered the painful things and forgot the rest, as Fenris had.

If so, Anders was no longer the man who broke slaves with kindness.

“Bring him with us,” Fenris decided, feeling giddy with the concept of his opinions accepted with such finality. “He can remain at the Amell estate, unless Hawke minds. The Templars would turn him Tranquil and he committed no wrongs.” Fenris paused at the confused expression on Sebastian’s face, then elaborated, “He might act differently, but he is beholden to Danarius. He is no slave, but his will is not his own.”

Sebastian nodded, understanding even when he shouldn’t be, but smiled so sincerely Fenris couldn’t bring himself to be angry. “Shall we go, then?” he offered, lifting his bow from the table as Fenris nodded and stood himself.

He watched, with blanked awe, as Isabela noted his movement and hopped up from her spot, leaving the piles of loot which she’d been organizing for another time, and both Hawke and Varric turned to hear his choice. Fenris took a moment to relish at the action he sparked in them; the value of his decision.

Unfortunately, Fenris had decided to give Varania, _his sister_ , over to Aveline, so perhaps this wasn’t the best time to enjoy the decision making process when she was suffering under the consequences.

Although, face to face with Aveline and his hand clenched around Varania’s arm, Fenris was struck dumb with nervous tension.

In the end, it was Hawke, who, with a glance towards Fenris, took Varania and handed her over to Aveline. The guardswoman clapped the lightest irons any of them had ever seen around her wrists, locks snapping threateningly but careful not to pinch her delicate skin, while _the idiot healer_ complained loudly.

“ _Fasta vass_ , Anders,” Varania hissed, posture ridged with suppressed energy. Despite her predicament, her face remained focused and calm, aside from her eyebrows, which twitched together every time she glanced at Anders. “Calm down!”

“Calm down? _Calm down?!_ ” Anders repeated, reaching for her around Aveline, eyebrows furrowed with stress. “This is calm! Me-not-calm would involve fire balls!”

“This is very precarious, you idiot!” she whispered harshly, leaning forward as if she intended to swoop down upon him like a furious hawk. “Just,” she beseeched, exasperated with him like a sister would be, “for once in your life, keep it together!”

Fenris thought to provoke Anders further, make him, as he eloquently stated, “me-not-calm” and bring out the fire balls, if only to test if Varania would wield her magic in Anders’ defense. To prove that she valued him more than her own brother.

Aveline, as if reading her friend’s intention through her furrowed, scolding eyebrows, pulled Varania away from the seething mage, demanding silence from the both of them.

“She hasn’t done anything!” Anders rounded on Hawke with too much passion and fury for someone living on good will. “If you’re sending her to the Circle, then you’re sending me as well!” By the look in his eyes, a mix of terror and rage, the healer probably considered turning himself in to be the equivalent of threatening suicide. Considering what Fenris had seen of the Kirkwall Circle, such a thing wasn’t beyond expectation.

He thought of the Templar Hawke had helped the sewer abomination kill and had to steel himself against a shudder.

“She was planning to enslave Fenris!” Hawke argued, refusing to back down despite the unsure expression he’d worn when Varania’s slim wrist passed from his hands. “The only reason you’re not going with her is because you’re apparently necessary to preventing that!”

“She was a slave,” Anders seethed, balling his fists and looking very much like he planned to punch Hawke in the nose which would end _spectacularly_ poorly. “Of course she did whatever Danarius asked of her, what else was there?”

“Mage,” Fenris snapped, interrupting their argument and drawing both mages’ surprised attention. “ _Anders_ ,” he amended. “She isn’t going to the Circle. She’s going with Aveline, who is Captain of the Guard and my friend. She…” At this, Fenris fidgeted. “Varania will assist the guard in identifying the mercenaries Danarius hired and worked with so they may be prosecuted. Depending on her usefulness, we will determine her fate from there.”

Anders simmered, but his rage quelled to a mild frown. “Fine,” he snapped. “I guess it’s your decision whether she lives or dies anyway.”

Despite his assurance, neither Fenris nor Anders looked particularly pleased about that.

Fenris wasn’t sure why, but when the three of them arrived at the Amell Estate, he followed Hawke and Anders inside without a thought. He couldn’t be alone in Danarius’ manor, not with all the thoughts threatening to break through the day’s adrenaline and kept at bay by a thin membrane of activity.

Hawke informed Bodhan of how he was relegating Anders to what basically amounted to house arrest in the Amell Estate, policed by Hawke’s overlarge Mabari. Bodhan was shockingly blasé about the arrangement.

Fenris curled into his favorite chair while the two mages sat in a chilly silence under the towering shelves of Hawke’s library, trying to recall the story Anders once told him of the Templar’s pet Mabari but unwilling to bring it up while the air crackled with unfriendliness.

Silence reigned, despite Hawke and Anders’ initial moment of bonding over making the same terrible joke, until Orana stepped through the library doorway, carrying their tea, only to bring everything to an edge with a shriek.

“ _Medicus!_ ” she cried, just barely avoiding sending the tea tray plummeting to the ground as she set it blindly onto the nearest flat surface.

Anders blinked his eyes wide as Orana hurried to stand before him.

“Orana,” he said as he recalled the name and the face, nose wrinkling as he tried to place her. “Oh! Right, you were…” He struggled to his feet as Orana hovered over him, hands fluttering at either side of his shoulders, still unsure of how to interact with others as a freewoman. “Maker, I’m glad you’re okay, I was worried when Hadriana took you and…” Anders bit his tongue, eyes closing off, and he shot Fenris a worried glance.

“I was freed!” Orana exclaimed, still as confused and surprised as she was when Hawke handed her the first of many payments. She was smiling absently as if the concept on its own confounded her. “I… I work for Messere Hawke, I, he pays me for cooking and cleaning,” she stuttered to a halt, tears welling when she finally settling on pressing her hands against Anders’ shoulders. “I’m so happy you’re alive!”

“I second that,” Anders joked, offering her a seat on the couch. When she glanced at Hawke for permission, still fearful of the Champion spontaneously transforming into Hadriana, her employer merely raised his eyebrows and refused to offer any other gesture.

Orana took the risk and sat down, Anders falling into place next to her. The generally quiet girl launched into a monologue of the events and fluttered her hands around Anders’ shoulders, constantly close to touching him but never managing it. Hawke opened up quickly, filling in spaces of her stories with exaggerations of his own, even mentioning Fenris a few times, although the elf was lost in his own thoughts.

He dwelled on the unsavory emotion that bit at his stomach the moment Orana spoke with Anders.

Fenris was disgusted by the stab of jealousy that compelled him to mock the girl’s excitable chatter; it was unfair and sickening. Of course he wasn’t the only one with an attachment to the healer, Fenris scolded himself. Hadriana must have sent all her slaves to her spy.

And yet, Anders’ interest in Orana seemed genuine. Perhaps he adopted the persona of a kind healer after Hadriana’s death. Fenris could imagine the scruffy, endearingly talkative, friendly healer was a more appealing person then one who whispered secrets to a horrible bitch.

Still, despite knowing what he did about Anders, Fenris wanted to draw the healer’s attention back to himself. It squirmed in his stomach and pushed him to set his tea aside, no longer tasting anything but cotton on his tongue.

Anders probably treated thousands of slaves like Fenris; touched them with the same gentleness, mocked them with the same lightness and expected to be mocked in return, and laughed at all their semi-formed jokes.

Fenris seethed at the thought; he was no longer a slave. He should no longer be so desperate as to long for a _mage’s_ friendship.

Particularly one whose personality Fenris couldn’t quite work out; he couldn’t deny the interaction between him and Hadriana, but he also couldn’t deny the honest affection Anders held for Orana.

Perhaps held for him, as well.

“Mage,” Fenris interrupted suddenly, bringing an end to whatever story Orana and Hawke were regaling Anders with. The three turned, even the Mabari looking up, with varying expressions; Orana looked disappointed, but hid it well under timid eyes, Anders wrinkled his nose before remembering himself and glancing away, while Hawke had an eyebrow quirked in curiosity, but forcing a nod of acknowledgement and a friendly smile, probably softer today then he would ever be again.

The entirety of their attention was on him and Fenris had forgotten what exactly he planned to say.

“What happened with my sister?”

That had definitely not been what Fenris planned to ask, nor anything he particularly wanted to hear, but it was something he felt compelled to understand. Varania’s miserable whispers of freedom’s bane, how the boon _Leto_ apparently fought for turned to ash, still echoed in his head.

Hawke’s face twisted up as if to say “ _Really?_ ” but he kept his lips pursed and allowed Fenris to study Anders’ tense smile.

“I honestly don’t know, Fenris,” he admitted, leaning forward against his palm. “I only met her two years ago. She… hasn’t had it easy, but I don’t know the specifics. Danarius’ apparently had his eyes on her for a while, maybe since the beginning, I don’t know. We’re friends,” he added hurriedly, “but she’s tightlipped about everything.”

Fenris raised an eyebrow, ignoring Hawke as he fled from the library to a place he could eavesdrop without having to involve himself. Orana was on his heels, turning only to bow clumsily to the both of them.

“Danarius has not kept you close, then?” Fenris asked once their footsteps, the sound of which was childishly imitated outside the library door, faded. Fenris had attempted to keep the accusation from his voice but, by Anders’ wrinkled nose, he knew he’d failed.

“Danarius has never kept me close.” He narrowed his eyes at Fenris as if insulted. “Do you think we were friends or something? There’s not some secret mage-club we all drink and scheme at, you know.” Anders paused. “Well, there is, it’s called the Magisterium, but you know how welcome I’d be at _that_.”

“Then why…” Fenris pursed his lips in thought, trying to gather the information he knew to weigh against what he didn’t. “Why did he bring you?”

Anders made an aborted shrug, apparently deciding to quit halfway through the motion and leaving his shoulders hunched slightly. He seemed to war with himself for a moment, shooting nervous glances toward the library’s shelves for a distraction, only to slump forward in surrender when no revelation struck him.

“For you,” Anders finally admitted. “I… He’s kept me so long because he’s got this mad idea that you’ll come back. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but you can’t be healed by anyone other than a Spirit Healer.”

Fenris nodded, acknowledging the truth in this; it had been one of Hawke’s complaints, that none of his already subpar healing spells seemed to affect him. Even the Undercity healer, a kind mage living with a Dalish woman possessed by a demon she guaranteed was benign- _as if_ \- had difficulty healing him.

“And we don’t exactly grow on trees,” Anders snorted. “Particularly in the Imperium.”

“You were… _collected_ specifically to tend to me?” Fenris couldn’t identify the source of his interest in the idea, nor the brightening in his chest as he considered it. Perhaps it was the delusion that Danarius paid him special attention cropping up where Fenris thought he ran it down.

Anders nodded. “Yeah. Danarius went to my Enchanter, first. I guess after she shot him down, he found me.”

“Were you made his apprentice?” Fenris asked, and before Anders could open his mouth to give what was likely the same excuse he gave years ago, Fenris continued, “Do not lie to me. Since I have seen you, has Danarius made you his apprentice? You obviously have some legality in the Imperium, whether you are a citizen or not, otherwise how could you expect your witness to the changes in Danarius’ will be worth anything to the Magisterium?”

Anders remained still for a moment, thoughtful, before he smiled weakly.

“I don’t like what freedom’s done to your critical thinking skills, Fenris.” He laughed humorlessly, the sound wracking against his throat. “I do have a visa for the Imperium. You need a license to charge for healing, after all. It’s how they keep track of us. I’m still a foreigner, but I’m also not technically a citizen anywhere else so… uh, legal limbo?” Anders raised his hands, palms upward in surrender and desperately cheeky smile pulling at his lips. “Essentially, I’m a member of Danarius’ household and he was responsible for me. It’s why the Black Divine’s Templars never registered me to a Circle.”

Fenris combed through the mass of words, spoken quickly and slurring together as Anders tended to when he hadn’t wanted to admit something and hoped speaking more words would make up for it. Aside from the legal nonsense, Fenris understood the important thing; Anders was not Danarius’ apprentice.

“Danarius never offered you the position, then?” Fenris cocked an eyebrow, offering Anders a chance to lie. He knew of Danarius’ interest in the mage and he knew how Danarius’ interest manifested itself; by sinking his claws into a person and dragging them closer until there was no separation.

Anders had Danarius’ claws in him, but the separation between the two was gaping.

“No,” Anders muttered, looking at Fenris’ feet as if he were ashamed. “Well, yes, the position _was_ offered. It’s actually what Danarius used to lure me into his sphere in the first place.”

“Why did you reject it?” Fenris would not let Anders lie his way out of his judgement; if the mage had an ounce of the poisonous ambition that plagued so many of his kind, then Fenris would see it rear its ugly head now. Before he rationalized too many of the mage’s decisions and fell into the odd friendship Fenris spent years denying the existence of.

“You, mostly,” Anders choked out, laughing like he was dying. He pressed his hands to the sides of his head, pulling the skin away from his eyes, already wide and strained with memory that shamed and disgusted him. The brittle laughter only serving to make himself look more out of his head. “Yeah, definitely you.”

Fenris kept his teeth pressed together, twitches of pain blooming in his temples from the pressure. But he kept silent; he couldn’t voice his opinion until Anders elaborated.

“He brought me to the… place he kept you after the experiment, _Maker_.” Anders entire body shuddered, voice breaking. “I don’t think I healed you, I think that I… I think I finished the job.” Fenris remained still, watching Anders gulp back more admissions. “He made me just as guilty as he was, and you, you smiled like I did something great and I… I couldn’t stand it. I dropped to my knees and begged his forgiveness, I never beg, Fenris.” Anders eyes went sharp, strength suddenly filling his bearing and pushing his spine straight, undoing whatever broke within him at the sight of a bloodied elf with lyrium carved into the skin. “I never begged for anything from the Templars, or the damn Mother and her fucking flock of Sisters, but,” at this, Anders’ strength drained away until he was again slumped over himself, “I begged Danarius to never… never make me see that again. He… made me a different offer. I wonder if he’d rather of had me as his apprentice, but I guess he settled for a slave.”

It was… information that ate away at Anders, the words wrenched from deep in his chest and the shudders that wracked his form spoke of turmoil. It was information that filled many blanks in Fenris’ understanding, but something else caught in Fenris’ mind. Something that rolled around and demanded his prodding like an aching tooth.

“You…” Fenris sucked in a breath, pushing on despite Anders’ flinching. “You do not call him Master. You never called him Master,” Fenris whispered, voice hoarse, recalling the thousands of times Anders had snapped the name _Danarius_ with stubborn, rebellious derision. He did not simper as this imagined Anders had. He did not collude with Hadriana.

He did not find Fenris sickening.

Anders’ eyes shot up, meeting his in confusion.

“No.” Anders furrowed his eyebrows as a strange amusement, bitter and sick, spread in Fenris’ chest. A few chuckles escaped the writhing mass and bubbled to the surface, completely unbidden.

_“He adores me. Slanders Master Danarius whenever I put my hands on him. Sickening, isn’t it?”_

What a twisted fiction of Danarius’ twisted mind; a prized slave, in love with the very healer his master ensnared to care for him, the rebellious Circle Mage seeking freedom in an empire of slaves, mocking his master whenever they joined together.

 _Varric_ couldn’t have written it any better.

The memory was the plot of every Tevinter satire; a magister fooled by those he ruled over, with the added lesson of a tortured fable. The healer was evil all along, the slave was left broken and cleaved harder to his master; the status quo forever unbroken. The grafted memory, sown together with blood magic, was childish and, somehow worse, _uncreative_.

A pretty ending to a story that never existed in the first place; was it so impossible for Danarius to see friendship and innocence?

_Sickening, isn’t it?_

Anders was and had always been his friend and Fenris was a mad fool with broken memories; Fenris felt like laughing.

He didn’t realize he _was_ laughing until a sudden wash of cold water stung at his skin and shocked him into wakefulness, laying on the ground where he’d slumped from his chair, and staring up at two friends, one concerned and the other snickering.

“Hawke.” Anders huffed a few stilted chuckles, still pushing down his own hysterics. “What are you- _oi!_ ”

Hawke splashed what water was left in the pitcher onto Anders. For symmetry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is sort of a prelude to another, longer story I'm working on. The next bit will be more... cheerful? Funnier? At least what I've written so far is (this was supposed to be funny, but went completely off the rails). It basically documents Fenris' attempts at being friends with Anders and then courting him from Hawke's POV and reveals/discusses what Danarius' plans were for Anders' clinic and Varania.


End file.
